First of all I would like to mention that I've switched to Linux 2 and a half years ago, more or less at the debut of Mint 17. I was still a Linux newbie back then and I was looking for an easily accessible distro, Mint was the answer. It came with the Mate desktop which was exactly the Gnome-2 desktop I was looking for, out of the box support for MP3 and the most important of all: Out of the box 32bit support on the 64bit ISO.

Fast forward to present day, I'm still using Mint because it's the distro I find myself most comfortable with, in part big thanks to the superb software selection and the 32bit support on the 64bit ISO. Last week I obtained a PC which I will be using offline and decided to install 18.2 since it was already released. To my surprise I discovered that the 32bit support has been dropped off the installation disc, needless to say this changed my point of view of Mint, as it was one of the major reasons I stood with this distro the whole way. While I managed to install many of the needed 32bit libraries manually, I can't foretell how many more I will still need to get all my usual software running and like I said this PC will not have online access.

Sadly for me, 18.2 has been a major stepback and right now my best solution is to either install 18.1 or move to a different distro.

I understand that I'm in no position to demand anything from the Linux Mint team, but if you please can continue to provide these libraries in your releases I would very much be grateful.

Of course you would need a network interface card for the new PC.
Or better: use a wifi usb stick...

Try it with an 18.2 LiveCD 64-bit ISO on the new PC first?

Another approach: upgrade in-place from 18.1 to 18.2 on your regular system. Are the 32-bit lib's still there? If so, with a LiveCD use Menu | Preferences | Disks to Create an IMG file, and transfer it to the new PC with an external USB drive. Then again with LiveCD, Recover your new root partition from the IMG file.

I archive these IMG files as backups with every major change. Best advantage: individual archived files can be retrieved in the File Explorer by Recovering the IMG to a second partition. By changing the UUID in its /etc/fstab, and repairing grub with Boot-Repair, either partition can be booted.

I mean I know how to install the 32 libs manually and I have installed quite a number of them prior to my post, but the thing is I won't always have internet access to the system. This is a problem I'm facing only with 18.2, with earlier versions most of the 32bit libraries are already installed and it required little intervention, whenever a particular program needed them.

You know, Jon, it took a few years to drag me away from Win-XP over to Win-7. I felt I simply could not give up my fav apps on XP. Even today I have that XP system with all my apps on VirtualBox, but I rarely refer to it.

Like XP back then, I suspect that 32-bit is on the way out, with most new hardware built for 64-bit. My suggestions are merely ideas of how to transition to LM-18.2 but with legacy 32-bit files.

I mentioned using a USB-Wifi dongle, because even if the 64-bit ISO did contain 32-bit libraries, you would still need an internet connection at setup for install and apt-updating.

1) What about upgrading in place from 18.1 to 18.2 on a test system, or even using an 18.1 Live-CD? I did it quickly, and it worked well. I don't know if the 18.1 32-bit libraries were brought over or not...

If so, create an IMG file of the new 18.2 system with 32-bit libraries and copy it over to the new PC. Internet not even needed, theoretically (but what about driver-updates?).

2) Oh, if you try upgrading on an 18.1 LiveCD and try an Install right after, I wonder if the 18.2 version with updates will be installed? Just an idea.

3) Ok, how about trying #2 on the new PC with USB-Wifi dongle attached for that initial setup only?

To install the 32 bit libraries on Linux Mint 18.2, the same as on Linux Mint 18.1, you can just install the package ia32-libs. In one go from the terminal:apt update && apt install ia32-libs

This will download 104 MB of packages and needs 419 MB + 104 MB of additional disk space. I imagine the reason it's no longer installed by default is because it saves 419 MB of disk space on the installation and shaves 104 MB off the size of the ISO and 32 bit only software is perhaps less common today?

Edit: and yes, upgrading in place from 18.1 to 18.2 would leave the 32 bit libraries installed. But as shown you can easily install them on 18.2. Assuming you already have the 18.2 ISO, installing the 32 bit libraries on that will be a much smaller and quicker download than upgrading from 18.1 to 18.2. It will be risk free as well. Though yes it does need a working Internet connection.

Out of curiosity, what programs do you have that are still 32 bit only? I assume something older and closed source?

xenopeek wrote:
Out of curiosity, what programs do you have that are still 32 bit only? I assume something older and closed source?

Linux gaming has quickly become very popular these past few years, so I'm no longer forced to use Windows, unfortunately some games still use 32bit binaries (sometimes even ones released recently). When I learned Mint came with them pre-installed it quickly became my favorite distro ever, it was the fire and forget distro for quick installations, also helped some people transition to Linux due to its ease of use.

I understand the Mint team have their reasons for such a move, probably even meant for work for them in the long run. While I can slowly adjust to it in my future systems it and install the libraries every time I do a clean installation, it will feel a different distro than the one I used for almost the past 3 years. Also I don't mean to be rude, but the download size is almost hardly an issue nowadays and it's so minor that it's not even worth it.

I don't want to sound entitled / whiny or (again) rude, but such a move slightly changed the point of view of how I used to see Mint. I manage plenty of systems using Mint, some are online some are offline. For now everything is ok, but when the time comes to update/upgrade, I can already imagine the additional time I will spend on them installing the libraries on each system, which goes without saying that it can be a nightmare.

So in other words, At home I can adapt and all but on a wider scale I will probably be forced to move to a different distro.

If you do installations elsewhere, on systems without Internet access, I imagine you will be toting around an USB thumb drive with additional software (downloaded .deb packages) anyway? Running apt download ia32-libs from the LiveISO or on a fresh install downloads all the 32 bit libraries for easy offline installation on another system. The command doesn't work as intended if you have already installed ia32-libs hence suggestion to use the LiveISO.

xenopeek wrote:If you do installations elsewhere, on systems without Internet access, I imagine you will be toting around an USB thumb drive with additional software (downloaded .deb packages) anyway? Running apt download ia32-libs from the LiveISO or on a fresh install downloads all the 32 bit libraries for easy offline installation on another system. The command doesn't work as intended if you have already installed ia32-libs hence suggestion to use the LiveISO.

Looks like you've hit the nail on the head

I indeed have a large folder full of debian files, I will try the command you suggested, that may be exactly the solution I'm looking for. Thanks.